


No Rest For The Righteous

by Ludovica



Series: Muscle over Magic [2]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: (rather 'magical healer's cock'), Emotional Turmoil, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Magical Healing Cock, Muscular Women Are Hot, Pudgy Men Are Also Hot, Sleep Deprivation, The Saarebas Incident Turned The Author Into An Emotional Wreck And You Can All Suffer For That Now, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-29
Updated: 2014-09-29
Packaged: 2018-02-19 06:32:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2378363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ludovica/pseuds/Ludovica
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been days since they tried to 'help' Saarebas flee, and Hawke has not been able to sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Rest For The Righteous

It was one of those nights when Anders just couldn’t find sleep; one of those nights when he stopped trying after two hours of unsuccessfully counting sheep. He hadn’t been able to sleep properly ever since he had become a Grey Warden, but tonight nightmares of the darkspawn were not the only reason why he just couldn’t stand the thought of giving himself over to his troubled mind completely. And so, he had left the little hole-in-the-wall sort of chamber where his bed stood, and had lit some of the lamps around the clinic to continue his work on the first draft of his manifesto.

And it was a good thing that he wasn’t asleep, because otherwise Hawke’s sudden and characteristically blunt intrusion into the clinic would have scared him half out of his wits.

Granted, her appearance alarmed him enough as it was. At first the reason for his alarm had been the fact that the loud knocking at his door had to come from somebody wearing armored gauntlets. But when he had opened the spy hatch to see if the templars had finally come for him, all he saw was a blazing pair of light-blue eyes, an edge of black, tousled bangs and a smear of blood over pale skin.

He immediately unbolted the door and tore it open.

“Maker’s breath, Hawke,” he gasped when he saw the state his friend was in – it was hard to find any part of her armor that wasn’t splattered with blood, and when she turned around to vehemently close the door behind her he could see that there was far more than just blood sticking to the head of her maul. Hawke bolted the door far more vehemently than necessary and turned around again. Without even acknowledging Anders’ disturbed stare, she took off her maul and then started to open the straps that held her armor in place.

“Is any of that blood yours?” Anders asked, trying to cover his shock with a wry grin. He’d seen worse, really; Hawke had come to him in similar condition before.

But never alone.

“I’m fine,” she said, shucking her gauntlets and her vanguards. Now that she was standing in the light of one of his lamps, Anders could see that her eyes were bloodshot, and that there were dark circles around them.

“You look like the guys lying around in front of the Hanged Man at four in the morning,” he quipped, but then his expression grew more serious. “Did you drink, Hawke?” That would explain her behavior – she hadn’t come to his clinic alone since Anders had found out about her magical little secret. Their relationship had been very cool in general since that argument at Hawke’s place; he just didn’t understand what had driven her to come to him in the middle of the night, bloodied and distraught.

“No. Yes. Yesterday.” Hawke was mumbling. She dragged her hand over her face and groaned. “The day before yesterday, I think. I’ve been out with her tonight.” She nodded to her maul while she fumbled with the straps of her breastplate. Anders was certain that the curse words she used when the knots and buckles just didn’t want to yield were a testimony of the fact that she was really spending too much time with Isabela.

He walked towards her and helped her with the breastplate. She huffed at that, but let her hands fall limply to her sides.

“How long has it been since you’ve last slept?” He couldn’t keep the amusement out of his voice. She usually never let anybody but maybe Bethany help her with her armor.

She shook her head, scrunching her eyes closed. “I think I fell asleep for a few minutes yesterday night… But otherwise…” Her hands clenched into fists when he took off the breastplate together with her pauldrons. She rolled her shoulders, then she took off her cuisse and the rest of her leg armor. Finally she even stepped out of her boots.

Anders ignored that she hadn’t actually answered his question and frowned instead, serious now. “Why exactly are you stripping down?” _Wait a second._ “Are you in pain? Is that the reason why you didn’t sleep?”

Hawke just huffed while she opened the strings that held the padding she wore under her armor.

“I’m not in pain. Not physically. Ugh.” She let go of the strings and rubbed her face again, then she started to pace through the clinic, with half the padding hanging off of her. “I can’t stop thinking about Saarebas.”

Anders immediately felt something deep inside of him cramp. He gritted his teeth for a second, tried to battle the memories of the humiliation he had felt, the absolute wrongness, the horror of just looking at that poor creature, with his cut horns and sewn lips. Injustice. Cruel and terrible injustice.

Hawke rubbed both of her hands through her short hair. “I try not to hate people I’ve never met, you know, I try not to make blanket statements, but I hate the Qunari so much.” Her hands dropped again, and she clenched and unclenched her fists. “They kept him on a _leash_. A fucking _leash_ , Anders! He was one of _them_ , and they treated him like an _animal_!”

She was shaking. Anders suspected that her sleep deprivation was part of the reason, but she was obviously angry. Furious, in fact.

Then he noticed that her lower lip was quivering. She seemed to notice it at the same moment, and instantly clamped her hand over her mouth. She stood still and just stared at the floor, her eyes wide and blank.

She looked so miserable that Anders could hardly keep himself from walking up to her to wrap his arms around her body. Yes, they had had their problems, they thought very differently about some things that were immensely important for both of them, and he still couldn’t get himself to forgive her for what he felt was a betrayal of all mages, but even though she was one of the most hardy women he knew, and even though he would have never been able to even imagine her as vulnerable as this, he still couldn’t help the pain he felt when he saw her like that.

He mustn’t forget that she was a mage too. No matter the muscle, no matter the maul, no matter the bravado, she was a mage too. If the templars got her, they would lock her up just like they had done with him. If she had been born a Qunari, they would have sewn her lips shut and chained her just like they would have Anders. Her face would have been hidden behind a mask forever. He knew the horror this very idea had caused him, but he had never paused to consider that Hawke had to feel the same.

Why hadn’t he?

He had sworn to help all mages. Hawke was a mage as well, no matter how much she tried to hide or deny this fact. He couldn’t just pick and choose who he wanted to help. Not unless they succumbed to the call of demons, and he couldn’t think of anybody who was more unlikely to become a blood mage than Hawke.

Hawke rubbed her hand up over her face and covered her eyes again. “Every time I try to sleep – every time I close my eyes, I see him again. I see how they look at him, I see how he cowers on the ground, I see how he sets himself aflame. I keep seeing him and I cannot _fucking_ sleep.”

She groaned again and finally continued with the strings on the padding. “I thought smashing some of those thugs that run around everywhere at night would help me clear my mind, but all it got me are new rust stains on my armor and pieces of bone sticking to my maul…”

Anders nodded and headed to the little table where he stored some of his most regularly used herbs and fixings. “I’ll brew a sleeping potion for you. If you want, you can stay here tonight, you really don’t look like you should go home alone.”

Hawke waved him off. “You know I could’ve just brewed my own sleeping potion. That swill just gives me headaches… And it’s not what I need, not what I need to…” She grabbed her head again, waving her other hand in vague circles. “To get my mind off it.” The pained look in her eyes was confused and desperate at the same time. Then her eyes found him again, and for a second they glazed over, before she shook her head and cleared her throat.

“You’re… You are the opposite of everything they stand for… Everything they believe, Anders. I wanted to come to you because it feels… I feel saver in your presence. Secure.” She lifted a hand before he could object. “Not necessarily physically now. I know that your presence could get me killed yadda yadda…” She smiled apologetically. “But… What you want… What you are… There is nothing, nobody in Thedas that’s more different from the Qunari and their… their mage slaves, than you.” He could see her fingers curling again – not clenching this time, just curling and releasing.

She walked a few stops towards him, then paused. “I hate the thought that no matter where you look, people think they can just… just use people, use people’s bodies and minds and abilities as if they were nothing but tools, objects they can proliferate themselves on.” Now one of her hands clenched. “And Tevinter be damned, in the world I live in, the one group of people who gets used the most viciously are mages. And seeing people like you… Like us… Seeing mages just accept their fate, just accept that they are nothing but tools for those who have no idea whatsoever about the nature of their abilities…” She sighed heavily and rubbed her face. “I need to get it off my mind. I can’t walk around all day and night thinking about how they see nothing in us but our power – nothing else, nothing…”

Hawke’s voice had become louder again, and he could hear the tears that she had fought down to the back of her throat, but her eyes were full of fire and fury when she looked up at him. And then she crossed the last few feet between them. Her hand was suddenly in his hair, painstakingly gentle, even though he could feel how hard it was for her to not just grasp a handful of his hair in her powerful fingers. She pushed her body against his, and he could feel her shivering, quaking. Her mouth was right next to his ear, and he heard the strain in her whisper.

“I can feel it eat me up from inside, Anders. This world doesn’t fucking want us and I am sick of it, I’m so incredibly sick of it, I’m sick of people suffering and dying and being turned into tools.” Her lips were quivering against his skin, and suddenly he could feel her anger as well, like heat pouring from her body into his. He closed his eyes, let her words resonate with the truths in his soul, let her wrath feed his burning hunger for justice. Justice for all mages in Thedas. Justice for him. Justice for Hawke.

Hawke’s voice was raw, hoarse with emotion. “I want you to-“ she swallowed, “I want you to fuck those feelings out of me. I want you to fuck those… Those thoughts out of me. I need one night of rest, but for that I need to get rid of this anger for a moment, just a moment…”

Immediately he opened his eyes again, and he could tell by the sudden slack feeling in his jaw that he was gaping at her. Her face was just inches away from his now, her light eyes scrutinizing his expression. She looked serious. Absolutely, completely serious.

“You want to have sex with me?” he replied, trying to keep his voice neutral. He really didn’t know what to think about this. He wasn’t exactly new to casual sex, not even casual sex between really good friends, but… What a rapid shift. He had thought that Hawke’s affection for him had cooled after their talk about her… her way to live. She had hardly talked a word with him that wasn’t in some way related to, well, the team or the jobs he kept tagging along for (no matter how cool things between them had gotten, he didn’t even want to think about letting Hawke run around without a skilled healer around her). And now here she was, those earnest blue eyes looking at him in a way that was more threatening than pleading, though the way her other hand now clutched the front of his shirt felt pleading, helpless, as if she was holding on for dear life. He looked at her face, the sharp lines around her mouth, the dark rings under her eyes, the red veins all around her blue iris.

She really needed sleep.

What a strange reason to sleep with somebody.

_Sleep with… Hah._

He carefully cupped her face with both hands, let his thumbs rub over her cheekbones. She was beautiful, despite her exhaustion. A few drops of blood had dried on her cheek, and he gently rubbed them away. He had always admired the strength she exuded, the broadness of her shoulders and the sparkle of her eyes, the slightly derisive line that seemed to loom in the corners of her mouth nearly constantly, the way she swung her maul as if it was not an ounce heavier than a staff.

She tilted her head up, parted her lips slightly. He wanted to move in, wanted to lock his mouth with hers… But…

“Listen, Hawke,” he said softly, gently. “Sleep deprivation fogs your mind like alcohol does. I… I really don’t think you can think properly at the moment. I’d not feel comfortable sleeping with you if you were drunk out of your mind, and I don’t think I should sleep with you now when you are as exhausted as this.”

Hawke frowned again, then she clenched her eyes shut and rubbed them with two fingers.

“You think this is some sort of spontaneous tiredness-pipe dream, huh?” She let her hands sink onto his wrists, her thumbs rubbing circles into his pulse. “I… I have been thinking about this for a long while. Since… since Saarebas, really.” She frowned, as if she had a hard time getting her words straight. Well, she very likely had. She was even slightly swaying on the spot. Maker knew how she had managed not to get killed by those thugs whose brain matter was drying on her maul.

“I had those thoughts whenever I’ve seen you in the last days.” She kept frowning at him, and Anders gulped. Well, that was an interesting revelation.

He really didn’t know what to do. On the one hand, yes, he had had similar thoughts about Hawke too, but on the other hand… She was still hardly able to make informed decisions at the moment. Her hands were still locked around his wrists, and now the tips of her fingers started to stroke his hands.

“Maybe the whole no-sleep issue is affecting my boundaries… Or my inhibitions… Whatever…” She looked into his eyes, then her serious look melted and a soft smile appeared on her lips. Suddenly she took one hand off his wrist and let it run over the front of his tunic, until it came to a halt between his legs.

He let go of her face in surprise. She pushed her body closer to his, rubbed her nose over the stubble on his chin. Her hand started to rub him through the fabric of his clothes, and he couldn’t help the sigh that rolled over his lips as his eyes fluttered shut. It had been far too long since he had felt the warmth of another body so close…

Then Hawke kissed him, just below his jaw, and he felt the last of his control slip away.

His hands were on her hips in an instant. Then her mouth pushed against his own, and somehow they turned around, somehow they moved the last few feet towards the wall, and then Anders pushed the bulk of Hawke’s body against the dirty wall. He could feel her grin against his mouth, sloppy and tired, then her hand was in his hair, pulling his head back and mouthing at his throat, licking, nibbling, _biting_. He gasped when he felt her teeth sink just a tiny bit too far into his flesh, but then her hand pushed against his crotch, started to rub up and down again, and his gasp turned into a low moan.

A second later, her hands where both on the seams of his shirt, pulling it over his head while he let go of her reluctantly.

Once his shirt was gone and discarded on the floor, she put her hands onto his shoulders and pushed him away. For a second he thought she had changed her mind after all – but then he realized that she was looking at him, scrutinizing him. He felt an edge of embarrassment rise into his cheeks, but then a grin appeared on her face.

“Look at that…” she murmured and let her hands run over his chest, down to the pudge he had accumulated during his sedative circle life and which still clung to his belly and hips. She let her hands stroke down, touched his belly with the tips of her fingers. Then she rubbed it with the whole of her palms and finally grabbed him by the hips, pulling him close again.  
“I like men with soft bits,” she murmured, her sloppy grin still in place, while one of her hands ran down back between his legs. “As long as they’re nice and hard where it counts…”

Anders couldn’t stop a snort, even though his cock twitched in response to her words as much as to her touch. “Did you get that one from Isabela?” he asked, his voice still calm, but slightly strained with a laugh he tried to hold back.

“Isabela is more into wiry guys,” Hawke said with a shrug, then she grinned again as she pushed another kiss onto Anders’ lips, just for a second before she leaned back again.

“I’ve got _this_ from her, though.” Her eyes sparkled mischievously – much like Isabela’s, really – as she crossed her arms in front of her chest and then grabbed the seams of her shirt.

Anders took half a step back to get a better view. Hawke’s grin grew a little, then she slowly started to pull up her tunic, revealing just a slip of creamy skin right above the waistbands of her breeches. She pulled her hands up teasingly slow, revealing herself inch after inch. Anders was transfixed by the view, by the plains of white skin that looked as if it’d never seen daylight before.

Of course, he had seen her in the past. He was her healer, he had seen everybody of their companions in various states of undress, but this was different, absolutely and completely different. The flesh that she revealed for him wasn’t for him to fix. He didn’t have to touch it with utmost discretion, with utmost care to make sure that he didn’t become inappropriate. This whole situation was so incredibly inappropriate as it was, anyway. But it was alright. Hawke had said that she had wanted this earlier, before her brain had become a useless mush of sleep deprivation and anger. He would be careful, as gentle as he could, and he would help her to fall asleep afterwards.

Hawke wiggled her hips teasingly, her grin spreading for another second, then she pulled the tunic over her head in some sort of artistic contortion that he had seen Isabela do before.  
She discarded the piece of clothing at the end of this fluent motion and leaned back against the wall, pushed her hips out while she started to undo the lacing of her breeches. Anders couldn’t really follow the motions of her fingers, though. He was too transfixed by her upper body.

Once again, it wasn’t anything he hadn’t seen before. But, Maker help him, Hawke baring herself for their pleasure instead of medical help was as different as the touch of a lover was to the touch of an enemy. Her chest was expanding rhythmically, making her small breasts move up and down. Her nipples and areola faced out- and downwards slightly. Above her breasts, he could see her pectoral muscles beneath her skin, firm and slightly curved, and below them, the taut lines of her sides and the dents and elevations of her abdominal muscles. The broadness of her body wasn’t just an illusion brought about by her usual heavy armor. There was something heavy about her, something indisputably forceful, something about her thick biceps and broad shoulders that let anybody who saw her know that this body was a weapon as much as the maul that still leaned against his door was.

Anders let his thumbs dip into the dents right above her hipbones as he leaned forwards, catching her lips in a second kiss, careful and gentle, as if he didn’t quite know if she wanted to be kissed by him.

But Hawke sighed into the kiss and opened her mouth for him, tilted her head back against the wall again, and then Anders heard the faint sound of leather slipping over skin, and her hands were pulling his own softer trousers down. They tangled around his knees when she let go of them, and then they both gasped into the kiss as Anders crushed his body against Hawke’s. They rutted against each other while their kiss deepened once more. Anders closed his eyes to revel fully in the feeling of skin on skin, of that hard, beautiful body pressing against his own, in the feeling of her breasts pushing against his chest, in the feeling of her hands running over the small of his back, grabbing his rear, pushing him harder against herself, making his stiff cock rub over her abs.

She ended the kiss. But her lips didn’t leave his skin; she kissed over the stubble of his chin, over his jaw, down his neck. She nuzzled her face into the curve between his neck and shoulder and inhaled deeply, while one of his own hands reached up to run his fingers through her short hair.

Suddenly her grasp on his buttocks got so hard that he would have yelped if he hadn’t notice the way her whole body was tensing up. He frowned and put his other hand onto the back of her head as well, his thumbs gently rubbing circles behind her ears.

“We don’t have to do this if you want to stop,” he whispered into her ear.

He could feel her frown against his neck, then she shook her head slowly.

“No.” She pulled her face away from his skin and leaned back to look Anders in the eyes. Her gaze was hard, determined, but her pupils were so far blown that her irises were nothing more than light blue rings around them. But then she closed her eyes, pressed them shut and rubbed one of her hands over her forehead. “I still want to. I really do. It’s already helping, I think.”

That sloppy grin reappeared on her face, and she kissed his lips again. Her hand gently took one of his and led it down between her legs. Her hair was thick and coarse, and he could feel just how moist she was already.

She leaned forward and gently pecked him on the lips. “This wall is getting uncomfortable… Come on…”

She stepped out of her breeches and let her fingers run up over his forearm, then she gave him a look that nearly made his bones melt. He quickly lost his trousers as well and followed her back to the little nook where his rather pathetic excuse for a bed stood.

Hawke sat down on the lower end of the bed and spread her legs slightly, just enough to allow Anders to see a tiny slip of pink below the dark patch of her pubic hair. He breeched the last few steps between them and kissed her lips again. She put her arms around him and scooted back, and he knelt onto the bed, hitched his arms under her knees and put them over his own thighs while he prayed that the bed would carry the weight of both of them combined.

Hawke sank back onto the saggy mattress, and Anders followed the lead of her mouth until they were both lying, Hawke on her back and Anders above her. His still hard cocked rubbed against the roughness between her legs, then he reached down to rub over her pubic bone and finally down into the wetness of her sex. She was so warm, so ready, already dripping onto his fingers, and when he heard and felt her breathless moan, he decided that they had had enough foreplay.

“Mmh…” Hawke made when he sat up on his knees to take his member with one hand and positioned the tip against her entrance. She worked her upper body up onto her elbows so she could watch him, and his hips bucked forward by their own volition at that very sight, and then he was gliding all the way into Hawke’s body, and Hawke tilted her head back and let out a hearty moan and Anders just couldn’t stop himself anymore.

He wasn’t a gentle man, and he wasn’t a patient man, not when he was encompassed by heat and pressure and wetness. Hawke’s hands clasped his shoulders like vices, pulled him down into another breathless kiss while he moved in and out of her, and their moans and gasps mingled in the hot air that passed between their mouths.

But then Hawke pushed him away, and her hands cupped his head in their iron grip. He opened his eyes and looked down into the blue and black of hers, and his movements stilled when he saw just how serious her look was, despite the way the inside of her eyebrows pulled up, creating a crease between them.

“Is everything alright, Hawke? Should we stop?” he asked, trying to catch his breath.

She shook her head and let her hands run over his shoulders. Suddenly he noticed that something was _off_ ; something far more fundamental than their joining.

Hawke was shivering. Ever so slightly, but he could feel it along his body, against his hips, around his sex. She furrowed her brow further, and then Anders finally regained enough of his brain functions to sense what was going on.

The Veil had always been thin in the clinic. Once you started to use magic regularly at a specific place, the Veil tended to wear out, and with Justice inside of him, well… Anders had welcomed it, to say the truth. It was easier and he needed less mana to use the Fade for his healing magic if the Veil was thin and malleable. But right now, the Veil wasn’t only permeable.

It was opening from the inside.

Anders didn’t even know how this was possible. This couldn’t happen, not if… Not unless…

He looked down at Hawke again, only half-aware that he was still buried inside of her.

“You didn’t want to take the sleeping potion for a good reason, didn’t you?” he asked, and for some reason he couldn’t keep himself from moving inside of her. Maker, what was going on with him?

Hawke closed her eyes, half in shame and half in pleasure it seemed, and shook her head. Her lips pressed tightly together, then she opened her mouth. “Just make me sleep, Anders, please. It’s going to be alright if you’re just with me. Please.”

Her legs wrapped around his hips and pushed him farther into her. Anders gasped and closed his eyes. The magic radiating from her body was chaotic, unfocused. Diffuse. Like that of a child.

He had told her that her father’s decision had been foolish, hadn’t he?

But there was no time for any petty ‘Told you so’ at the moment. He started to thrust into her again while her powerful arms and legs kept firmly wrapped around him, and the shivering of her body turned into quaking while her magic turned stronger, while the Fade expanded around them. He sped up his thrusts while the grip of her hands got tighter, until she finally reared up and opened her mouth and eyes in a silent scream.

Anders pulled out of her and stroked himself off into his hand. Then he leaned over the edge of the bed to pull a rag from underneath to clean his hand.

Her magic had stopped leaking from her body. The Veil was stabilizing slowly. Hawke’s eyes had fallen shut, her head had fallen to the side and her breath was slowly becoming deeper, more regular.

Anders stood up and tucked her into his scratchy wool blanket, then he went to gather up his clothes. He slowly understood the whole extent of Hawke’s request. He had tipped her over the edge of consciousness, after days of exhaustion had just scratched at that edge, never really sending her over it. He had drawn out the last of her energy; she could sleep now without some potion in her system that would react with her magic and draw even more attention to her inside of the Fade than she likely already had gotten. He’d have to ask her what sort of demon exactly had accosted her; but they’d have time for that tomorrow. Now she should sleep. She really needed the rest.


End file.
